Some N E W B O O K S in Review

Murder in Minnesota. By WALTER N . TRE­

NERRY. (St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Socie­ty, 1962. xi, 252 p. Illustrations. $3.95.)

Reviewed by Thomas M. McDade

IN Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of Febru­ary, 1827, Thomas De Quincey laid down the principles for the proper appreciation of murder as a fine art. With this volume Mr. Trenerry joins that select group of De Quincey's heirs, Roug-head, Pearson and Lustgarten, as a discoverer, reporter, and connoisseur in the homicidal art. There are those who will report Mr. Trenerry's work as a project in social research, a contribu­tion to our knowledge of the seamier side of American culture — a sort of Victorian peep show. It is all of these things, but it is also a vastly entertaining and readable book about a sheaf of murders, almost all fresh and new to the reader of true crime.

In his cross section of Minnesota homicide, the author has selected sixteen cases with a fine range of time, locale, people, and plot. Except for the James-Younger raid on the Northfield bank and the Hayward-Ging case, all of the ma­terial will be new to even the most avid murder fancier; they were all new to me. In each case he has captured the flavor of the period, and his easy, ironic style masks his clear reporting of the facts and his skillful elucidation of the points of law involved. "Bobolink's Last War Whoop" is a nice reminder of the closeness of the Indian frontier, while in "A Night with French Lou," we get a view of life on the wild side in a small Minnesota town of the 1880s. The Arbogast murder of 1909 has all the elements of the Lizzie Borden case and came to about the same conclu­sion. Louis Arbogast was found lying naked in a burning bed, which had been drenched in gaso-fine, his skull smashed by blows. His wife and

MR. MC DADE is fl member of the Mystery Writers of America. He is the author of a re­cently published book entitled The Annals of Murder.

four of his five daughters were in the house at the time, and the murderer was obviously one of the household. Mrs. Arbogast and one of her daughters were charged with the crime; when Mrs. Arbogast was acquitted, the indictment against the daughter was dismissed. This case is one of those puzzles to intrigue the student of crime and psychology. It demonstrates again that the essential element for a really great mur­der case is a mystery — that there must be some part of the crime unknown and unknowable for the mind to conjure with.

Here, then, is an excellent description of criminal justice at work by a writer who is both a lawyer and historian, and whose style is not encumbered by his learning. The book is equip­ped with an appendix fisting afl those hanged in Minnesota after it became a state. Omitted from the list, though mentioned in the text, are the thirty-eight Sioux Indians hanged at Mankato in December, 1862, presumably be­cause they were executed by federal troops. A full set of footnotes tucked away in the back but available to the serious student, and a com­plete index, provide all the apparatus for easy reference. The designers of the book have en­livened it with chapter headpieces of nineteenth-century cuts appropriate to the text, which enhance the agreeable style and format.

In the 1940s an attempt was made to provide a homicidal history of the country in a regional murder series. Nine volumes were issued, each reporting the famous cases of a separate city. None of those works can match this book for wit, scholarship, and sheer entertainment. It should serve as a model for other state historical societies; perhaps we could have a state guide series to famous murders like the Works Prog­ress Administration state guides. Undoubtedly other areas are also rich, as Trenerry reports Minnesota is, in homicidal lore. He states that there were enough equally interesting cases to make other volumes without duplication of ma­terial. Here is an untapped treasure for the crime connoisseur. Mr. Trenerry has set a high mark; let us hope others wfll shoot at it.

234 MINNESOTA History

M I N N E S O T A M A V E R I C K

Ignatius Donnelly: The Portrait of a Politician. By MARTIN RmcE. (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1962. x, 427 p. $7.95.)

Reviewed by Walter B. Rideout

SOME SUBJECTS for historical study are rather fike the purloined letter in Poe's story: they are hidden out in the open where most people miss them. The political career of Ignatius Donnelly, the Minnesota Populist leader, is one such sub­ject. John D. Hicks published a long, useful article on that career in 1921, and subsequent historians and sociologists have commented on Donnelly in one connection or another. It is to the credit of Martin Ridge, associate profes­sor of history at San Diego State College, that he saw the obvious need for a full-scale study of Donnelly, that he perfoiTned the enormous re­search required for it, and that the work is so able a one.

As Mr. Ridge himself puts it, his book is really "several studies: a personal history, the story of a literary career, a political narrative, and an examination of the business and political ethics of the last century." Donnelly admitted to his diary that he had "a mind cut with many facets," but the author quite properly empha­sizes the political narrative. In clean, uncluttered prose, he traces Donnelly's career — his initial allegiance to the Democrats in his home city of Philadelphia, his shift to the Republican party soon after coming to Minnesota in 1856, his service as youthful lieutenant governor of the state, and his three terms as a radical Repub­hcan Representative from Minnesota in Con­gress. Covered, too, are the thirty remaining years of his life and of the century. Sometimes as an independent, sometimes in alliance with either major party, he advanced through the Granger, the Greenback, and the FaiTners' Alli­ance movements into national fame in the angry nineties as a leading orator and organizer for the People's part\'. Donnelly's important role in that third party revolt has long merited the detailed examination that Mr. Ridge gives it.

The author writes with admirable honest\'

and fauness. For example, he quite properly praises Donnelly's courageous attacks in 1893 on the Minnesota lumbering interests for their misuse of state lands; yet he also describes acts in Donnelly's career — such as some in behalf of the railroads during his Congressional years — that were at best ethically dubious. Mr. Ridge has shrewd insight into political pressures, and one of the most instructive aspects of his book is its detailing of the month-to-month progress of a man who was simultaneously a tough as-pfi-ant to political power and a dedicated hu­manitarian rebel.

That Donnelly just fafled to be a great man was the result both of his times and of his per­sonal make-up. Mr. Ridge shows us the times and the acts of the man clearly. 1 wish that he had attempted a more thoroughgoing analysis of Donnelly's personality, acute as both occa­sional observations and the last two summa­rizing pages are; but I should not seem so ungrateful as to ask for everything when the author has given us so much that has been needed for so long.

P O P U L I S M A N D P R O G R E S S

The Populist Response to Industrial America. By NORMAN POLLACK. (Cambridge, Harvard

University Press, 1962. 166 p. $3.50.) The Agrarian Movement in Illinois: 1880-1896.

By ROY V. SCOTT. (Urbana, University of

Ilfinois Press, 1962. vii, 153 p. $4.00.)

Reviewed by Carl H. Chrislock

WAS Midwest Populism a retrogressive or a progressive force? Did it aim to restore a rural Utopia which nostalgic agrarians fancied had existed before the advent of industrialism, or did it realistically seek to harness and disciohne the mighty forces which were transforming the United States in the late nineteenth century?

In The Populist Response to Industrial Amer­ica, Norman Pollack answers these questions unambiguously: "Populism was a progressive social force. It accepted industrial society, posed solutions not seeking to turn back the clock [and] it also was deeply committed to freedom."

MR. RIDEOUT is professoT of English in the Uni­versity of Wisconsin. He has recently edited a reprint of DonneUy's novel, Caesar's Column, issued by the Harvard University Press.

MR. CHRISLOCK is profcssor of history in Augs­burg College, Minneapolis, and has twice won the society's Solon. J. Buck Award for articles dealing with the Populist era.

March 1963 235

The greater part of Professor Pollack's book is devoted to a reconstruction of the ethos de­veloped in Populist newspapers, opinion jour­nals, speeches, and in surviving letters from the pens of both famous and obscure adherents of the movement. On the basis of an exhaustive investigation of these sources, many of which he found in the manuscripts collection of the Minnesota Historical Society, he concludes that Populism's creed was coherent, sophisticated, and, above all, radical. Also, it avoided the bane of so many reform creeds: dogmatism. "Popu­lism had no fixed position. This was a prag­matic creed, groping for basic solutions. . . . The answer was paternalism, a non-doctiinaire socialism developing in response to existing conditions.''

Given his sources. Professor Pollack constructs an able defense of Populism as a progressive force. However, had he carried his investigation beyond the texts which support his argument, it seems likely that he would have hedged his certainty with significant reservations. For ex­ample. Midwest Populism at times failed to give undivided support to measures consistent with the ideology Professor Pollack describes. A case in point is the Midwest Popufist response to the "subtreasury" plan — a proposed government grain and cotton storage-loan program. The Minnesota People's party platform of 1894 dropped advocacy of this program because many practicing Populists bitterly objected to its excessive "patemafism." Ignatius Donnelly — certainly one of the more "advanced" Popu­hsts — extended his support to the subtreasury plan; but even he, as Martin Ridge points out, "clung tenaciously to [the] agrarian laissez faire myth [whfle] he demanded government ownership of natural monopolies." {Ignatius Donnelly: The Portrait of a Politician, p. 397.)

Roy V. Scott's The Agrarian Movement in Illinois raises another question relevant to Pro­fessor Pollack's thesis. Why did Populism fail to win any substantial support in the older diversified agricultural sections of the Middle West? The farmers of Iflinois were in the fore­front of the Granger movement of the 1870s; they flocked by the thousands into the multi-organizational Farmers' Alliance movement dur­ing the 1880s; but very few of them voted the People's party ticket from 1892 to 1896. Of course, this does not prove Popufism to be retrogressive; perhaps the People's party was

236

too progressive for the farmers of Illinois. But Professor Scott does show that Illinois fanners regarded Populism's techniques — particularly its commitment to third party action — as too old-fashioned to serve agriculture's vital inter­ests within an urban-industrial society.

Debate about the direction of Populism's thrust — whether it was forward or backward — wfll doubtless continue. In the meantime, the safest conclusion seems to be that its adherents were torn between a nostalgia for the past and an inclination to confront the future realistically.

G R E A T P L A I N S W A T E R W A Y

A History of Steamboating on the Upper Mis­souri River. By WILLIAM E . LASS. (Lincoln,

University of Nebraska Press, 1962. xiv, 215 p. $5.50.)

Reviewed by Robert C. Toole

IN THIS scholarly study Professor Lass has told in detail for the first time the story of steam­boating on the upper Missouri — the section above Sioux City, Iowa—^from 1819, when the first steamer entered the Missomi, until 1936, when the last commercial navigation company on the upper river ceased operations. During much of this period the steamboat was the pri­mary means of river transportation, although it was rivaled by the flatboat in the nineteenth centmy and largely replaced by the gasoline packet in the twentieth.

Steamboat men made good profits for nearly two decades after the first railroad reached Sioux City in 1868 by co-operating with the raflroads there, at Yankton and Bismarck in Dakota Ter­ritory, and at other railheads. Commercial navi­gation finally died because of raiffoad and motor tnick competition and crop failures.

Leaders in the steamboat business included Pierre Chouteau, Jr., of the American Fur Com­pany, C. K. Peck of the Northwest Transporta­tion Company, Wilfiam J. Kountz of the Kountz fine, and Isaac P. Baker of the Benton Trans­portation Company. Two St. Paulites, Amherst H. Wilder and William F. Davidson, competed

MR. TOOLE is a member of the history faculty in Franklin College, Indiana, and the author of several articles on steamboat transportation in the upper Midwest.

MINNESOTA History

during the 1870s. Throughout most of the period tlie federal government played a variety of im­portant roles.

The book contains tables which provide inter­esting data on steamboat dimensions, tonnages, trips, salaries, wages, cargoes, rates, profits, and landings. The tables of freight rates to various Indian agencies and aiToy posts would have been more meaningful if the distances from the shipping point had been added. Maps of the main trade areas show most of the places dis­cussed in the text, while photographs of promi­nent steamers and steamboat men add realism to the narrative. Annotation, a bibliography, and a fafily complete index increase the use­fulness of the volume.

The author's principal sources of information include the Baker Papers fii the North Dakota Historical Society, newspapers, government publications (especially the annual reports of the chief of engineers), and records in the Na­tional Archives. Professor Lass has also drawn together scattered material from many books and articles. Unfortunately, he was able to sur­vey only the peaks of the mountainous Baker Papers, which appear to contain tons of stifl largely unmined raw materials.

The author's style is somewhat choppy and repetitious in places. Had the analysis of eco­nomic data been more systematic, it might have provided additional generafizations of value. Despite these minor shortcomings, the book makes a worth-while contiibution to knowledge and helps to fill a gap in the histoiy of the upper Missouri Valley.

situations to the efficient and lucrative service across Lake Michigan. Generally speaking, the single line across the midriff of Lake Ontario and most of the half-dozen routes across Lake Erie were opened primarfly for hauling United States coal to Canada, and all have now been discontinued. Other more prominent car ferries within the scope of this work operate across rivers associated with Great Lakes navigation. Many of these are still active and haul a wide variety of rail tonnage.

It is, however, on Lake Michigan that the car ferry has had its greatest and most lasting growth. By routing freight across the lake, ship­pers avoid the congested Chicago gateway and save many mfles in sending rail tonnage to and from the Northwest. At this writing eight routes are in year-round service there.

The author gives capsule accounts of the smaller ferries, their equipment, and the rail­roads financing their operation. Nevertheless, by thefi- very nature the ferries across Lake Michigan maintained by the Chesapeake and Ohio, Grand Trunk, and Wabash lines command most of the attention and the best writing. The ever-present ice in winter makes for heroic tales of adventure which are skillfully integrated into the saga of car ferrying. Radar and modern boats fike the Chesapeake and Ohio's four-track, thirty-four-car capacity fiagship, "Badger," have reduced hazards to a minimum.

The book is illustrated with representative (and some rare) photographs and well-tailored maps. There is also a "fieet list," an index of ships, and a general index, but no bibliography.

R A I L S O V E R W A T E R

The Great Lakes Car Ferries. By GEORGE W. HrLTON. (Berkeley, HoweU-North Books, 1962. 282 p. Illustiations, maps. $6.00.)

Reviewed by Frank P. Donovan, Jr.

CAR FERRIES were, and to a lunited extent still are, an finportant adjunct to railroad ti'ans-portation. In the United States their most spec­tacular growth has been on the Great Lakes.

o In view of tiiis, a histoiy of these lake ferries presents a good cross section of American car ferries and their method of operation.

This book co\ers a hundred-year period. In it George Hilton describes ferry routes varying from makeshift expedients in highly competitive

W E S T E R N H I S T O R Y

Probing the American West: Papers from the Santa Fe Conference. Edited by K. Ross TooLE, ROBERT M . UTLEY, JOHN ALEXANDER

CARROLL, A. R. MORTENSEN, and RAY A.

BILLINGTON. (Santa Fe, Museum of New

Mexico Press, 1962. vin, 216 p. $5.00.)

Reviewed by Robert G. Athearn

IN 1929 a number of scholars interested in the history of the West gathered at the little uni­versity town of Boulder, Colorado, to exchange

MR. DONOVAN is fl resident of Minneapolis and has written extensively in the field of transpor­tation history.

March 1963 237

ideas and to promote general interest in their chosen field of endeavor. The program was a register of names that were, or would be, very important in the field of frontier history: Fred­eric L. Paxson, Walter P. Webb, Louis Pelzer, Solon J. Buck, Joseph Schafer, Archer B. Hul-bert, Eugene C. Barker, LeRoy R. Hafen, Colin B. Goodykoontz, and others. Their papers were preserved in a published volume, a seedbed from which some important books were to grow.

Thirty-two years passed. A new generation decided to gather for a fresh look at the Ameri­can West, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, was chosen as the place to meet. Out of the "Con­ference on the History of the Western America" that assembled in October, 1961, came a group of papers published as Probing the American West, and a resolve to meet more often than every three decades.

The volume is introduced by Professor Ray A. Biflington, a leading light and president of the group that solidified itself into a permanent organization at Santa Fe, after which are pre­sented selected papers from the conference. The Spanish Southwest is treated in articles by France V. Scholes and Howard F. Cline, fol­lowed by two Cafifornia gold rush items written by Dale L. Morgan and J. S. HoUiday. Next, in pouit of time, is Oscar O. Winther's piece on the persistence of horse-drawn transporta­tion in the trans-Mississippi West. The Indians, always attractive to the historian, are treated in several places: John C. Ewers offers a fine article on the "marginal woman" (mothers of the mixed bloods); James S. Hutchins' "Mounted Riflemen: The Real Role of Cavalry in the In­dian Wars" and Lessing H. Nohl, Jr.'s "Macken­zie Against Dull Knife: Breaking the Northern Cheyennes in 1876" both deal with phases of the Indian wars, whfle William T. Hagan's "Quanah Parker, Indian Judge" shows the na­tive in another role. Fur trading, gold mining, cattle ranching, and farming — a famihar se­quence— are covered by Merrill J. Mattes (fur), Dwight L. Smith (gold), John T. Schle­becker (cattle), and Gilbert C. Fite (agricul­ture ).

In a delightful miscellany that concludes the work Walter Rundell, Jr., sets forth a highly readable bit on "The West as an Operatic Set-

MR. ATHEARN is profcssor of history in the Uni­versity of Colorado at Boulder.

ting;'' Howard W. Allen writes about Miles Poindexter, a progressive Senator from the state of Washington; N. Orwin Rush recalls the friendship of Frederic Remington and Owen Wister; Robert V. Hine turns out an exceptional­ly fine job with his story of a modern ranch in southern California; and John A. Hawgood (University of Birmingham, England) dwefls upon British interests in the American West. A wefl-known and experienced editor, Savoie Lot-tinville, offers some sage advice about unfinished tasks in Western history.

A striking characteristic of this very worth­while volume is its interpretive emphasis. Only a few of the articles are narrative and purely descriptive in nature. Many compilations of this type lack cohesiveness and all too often make sterfle reading. Probing the American West is a refreshing exception.

V O Y A G E U R S O N G S

Jongleur Songs of Old Quebec. By MARIUS BARBEAU. (New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rut­gers University Press, 1962. xxi, 202 p. Il­lustrated. $7.50.)

Reviewed by Grace Lee Nute

THIS valuable collection of songs begins with a definition of the word, "jongleur," which is not familiar to most Americans. Briefly the long definition may be reduced to this: "a strolling performer of the Middle Ages whose repertoire included juggling, acrobatics, singing, and play­ing of instruments for casual entertainment . . . the purveyor of popular song, dance, and tale," — in other words, the popularizer of the more stately and classic songs of the troubadour. Most of the jongleur songs, therefore, antedate the advent of printing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and came — to the extent that they did come — to New France with the earliest setders, mostly between 1640 and 1680. They migrated to Minnesota with the voyageurs.

Among the forty-two folk songs here printed (with afis) in French and English translation are such well-known paddling songs as: "A la claire fontaine," "En roulant ma boule," "Via I'bon vent," "Voici le printemps," "Les roses blanches," "C'est I'aviron qui nous mene," "La

MISS NUTE is well known for her books and articles on the fur trade and voyageur life.

238 MiNNESOT.\ History

complainte de Cadieux," and "Alouette." .\t least two of these were of vovageur composition and demonstrate how the jongleur tradition was kept ahve in New France.

Practically all die songs were collected in parts of eastern Canada, iflthough New Enghmd, Louisiiuia, the Ilfinois countrv, and e\en, in one instance, the Red River \'allev (Manitoba) are occasionally represented. It is a pit\- that some gffted collector like Mr. Barbeau has not spent time at La Crosse and Prairie du Chien, '\\'is-consin. Little Canada. Fond du Lac (Minne­sota), St. Paid, and otiier concentiations of voyageur descendants in this area, to pick up the old jongleur songs brought here bv canoe­men and fur traders.

One of the latter, to be sure, is gi\en promi­nence in tlie book as the second — perhaps even the first — kno\^Ti collector of \ovageur son^s. This was Edwiird Emiatinger (1797-1876) with a recognizable ^^"isconsin-Minnesota pat­ronymic. (Jim Falls, ^^'isconsul, is named for James Ermatinger.) Edward, howe\er, was of a branch more acquainted with the vo\as;eurs of Manitoba and the Far \\'est. Mr. Barbeau published the long-sought-for Ennatinger col­lection of songs in 1954 after it was loaned to the Ribfic -•Vrchi\ es of Canada hv an Oregon member of the Ermatinger famfl\- for cop\ing. He has made good use of it in this volume.

P A R K S U R V E Y

The State Parks: Their Meaning in American Life. Bv FREEM.VS: TILDEN. (New York, Al­

fred A. Knopf, 1962. .\vi, 496 p., .xi. 85.50.)

Reviewed by Russell W. Fridley

THIS welcome volume pro\ ides a much-needed general guide to the ever expanding state park mo\"ement in the United States. Nine-tentiis of it is devoted to an extensive sur\e\' of the coun-tr\ 's most famous and spectacular state parks. The remainuig one-tenth, the first three chap­ters, pro\ides an interesting account of the origins and unpressive growth of the state park nio\'ement across the countr\" and a pro^'ocative discussion of such topics as "\Miat State Piirks .Are For,' "Historical Parks,"' and "Principles, Poficies and Problems." Mr. Tilden, who since

MR. FRIDLEY is the director of the Minnesota

Historical Society.

1940 has served as consultant to the National Park Service, points out that ' I t is not the busi­ness of this book to tefl die states what tiiey should do in the field of state paiks. It can only indicate what has been done, how tiiis has been achieved, and what die pubhc enjoys in any given area."

It wifl surprise no one diat the Minnesota park wliich receives the most attention from Mr. Tflden is Itasca — one of the nation's oldest, largest, and most noteworthv state parks. Nor will man\- readers quarrel with the odier parks — Baptism, Gooseberrv, Scenic, and Interstate — he has chosen for their spectacular waterfalls and rockbouiid shores to represent the Minne­sota system. Howe\ er, there will be manv who will be disappointed bv the author's exclusive emphasis upon the parks of northern Minnesota and along the DaUes of die St. CroLx Ri\er. Two t)-pes of state parks which add variet^• and character to the Minnesota park s\"stem are totafly ignored. These are die historical parks — such as Fort Ridgeb- and Charles A. Lindbergh — and the prauie parks — exemplified hv Blue Mounds — in the southwestern and western sections of die state.

H U D S O N R E M I N I S C E N C E S

OSWALD J. SOLHEIM. now approachfiig his eightieth birthday, has a remarkable niem-on- for people and places in Hudson, N^iscon-sfii. His pamphlet. It Happened in Hudson (1962. 89 p . ) , neatly prfiited and fllustirated by the Star-Obser\er Pubfishuig Compan\-, should pro^•e a treasure-tio\e of information for anyone stiid^ing bygone davs in that St. Croix ^"aUey towii. Personal reminiscences such as these — rambling, discursive, and oc-casionaUy repetitive tiiough the\" mav be — are weU worth preser\ing in permanent form, since they record a wav of fife now long since past. Howe\er, those individuals who are not imbued with a bmlt-in fascfiiation for aU stories of valley interest ma\- find the present collec­tion disjointed and somewhat tedious to read. The te.xt woifld have been greatb- clarified bv the inclusion of a map. A fine, complete index is provided, and Mr. SoUieuii's pamplflet wifl thus prove uselifl to anvone interested in Hud­son genealogy- and faniilv histories.

^\'hen the autiior goes back to the earfiest years of the towTi, his facts sometunes become

March 1963 259

shaky. For example, the article on Hudson's ferries omits more than it tefls, and some of what it tefls is in error. In spite of occasional inaccm-acies, however, the pamphlet is an im­portant addition to the printed source material on the history of Hudson. The community

owes thanks to Wilfis Miller, editor of the Hudson Star-Observer, first for publishing Mr. Solheim's reminiscences as a newspaper series, and second for reprinting the material in more permanent form. It has thus been preserved from eventual oblivion. J-T-D.

. . . ontfu HISTORICAL HORIZON

A SOLID contribution to the published source material on the Lewis and Clark expedition has been made in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition With Related Documents, 1783-1854, edited by Donald Jackson (University of Ilfinois Press, Urbana, 1962. xxi, 728 p. $10.00.). According to Mr. Jackson, the work is intended to complement other accounts — most notably the journals of the expedition. It attempts to show in documentary form the framework of political and international sig­nificance, public interest, and government pol­icy within which the historic tiek took place. "It is no longer useful," Mr. Jackson writes, to think of the journey "as the personal story of two men," for it was "an enterprise of many aims and a product of many minds." Accord­ingly the documents presented range from an exchange of letters as early as 1783 between Thomas Jefferson and George Rogers Clark concerning possible Western exploration to cor­respondence growing from the long struggle to achieve publication of the expedition's findings. Aspects upon which particular light is shed in­clude the long and painstaking preparations for the journey and its importance as a scientific reconnaissance. More than half of the 428 items included are published for the first time. The editor has suppfied meaningful annota­tion, a bibliography, and a full index.

FOURTEEN scholars discuss as many men in a volume entitled An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century, edited by Norman A. Graebner (New York, 1961. 341 p . ) . Beginning with the serv­ice of John Hay in 1898, and continuing through the term of John Foster Dulles in 1959, the volume covers the important foreign policy decisions made by these men in the twentieth century. The essays offer background informa­tion on afl but three secretaries (Robert Bacon, Bainbridge Colby, and Christian Herter are omitted) as well as a consideration of their

240

relations with the press, the public, the Con­gress, and the president. According to L. Ethan Ellis, Minnesota's Frank B. Kellogg, who served from 1925 to 1929, faced a period "in which domestic matters were the primary con­cern and foreign affairs generally took a back seat." The Pact of Paris, states Ellis, brought Kellogg the Nobel Peace Prize, "but its built-in limitations ensured its ineffectiveness in the face of the first determined challenge . . . by Japan within Kellogg's lifetime." There is a bibliography for each of the men discussed, and an index.

TWO PAPERS first presented at the 1962 annual meeting of the American Association for State and Local Histoiy have been pub­lished as volume 2, number 12 of its Bulletins (Madison, Wisconsin, 1962) under the title A Look at Ourselves. The first paper, by Clement M. Silvestro, is devoted to "A Report on the Survey of Major Historical Agencies," whfle Richmond D. Wifliams writes "A Report on the Survey of Local Historical Societies." Both in­vestigations were conducted by members of the association to measure the resources and needs of historical societies, and the two papers contain summaries of the statistical data col­lected, as well as descriptions of the programs in operation or being planned by these so­cieties. Albert B. Corey, chairman of the sur­vey committee, notes in the foreword that whfle the complete findings could not be in­cluded in these brief reports, there did emerge "a picture of a vigorous and imaginative his­torical and educational movement which is growing in strength and importance."

AN INTERESTING legal history of an impor­tant industry in an adjoining state has been produced by James A. Lake under the title Law and Mineral Wealth: A Legal Profile of the Wisconsin Mining Industry (1962. 219 p . ) . Using readable, nontechnical language,

MINNESOTA History

Professor Lake surveys in a brief, useful, open­ing chapter the legal development of minerals in Wisconsin — its lead, zinc, copper, and iron ore—^in roughly "the chronological order in which the minerals became important in the state's economy." The author then turns his attention to the all-important land laws of the state and nation, as well as to those relating to capital, labor, geological surveys in Wisconsin, taxation, and government aid and regulation of mineral industries there. The work is fully annotated and indexed.

THE PERENNIAL problems of transportation which plagued the growth of the rich but long inaccessible Red River Valley are examined by John Harnsberger and Robert P. Wilkins in an ambitious series of articles which appear in the four issues of the North Dakota Quarterly for 1961 under the general title "Transportation on the Northern Plains." The first of these is de­voted to "The Genesis of Commerce." It deals with the beginnings of the Red River Settle­ment under the auspices of the Earl of Selkirk and the early establishment of trade with com­munities to the south along the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. According to the authors this trade, conducted via oxcarts and the famed Red River trails, grew in importance because of the difficulty and expense of sending goods through Hudson Bay and because of the mo­nopoly over the latter route maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company. The writers point out that a significant change occurred in 1857 with the decision of the fur company itself to take advantage of cheaper access through the United States. This helped to bring about "Steamboating North of Fargo" on the Red River — a phase of valley transportation which is examined in the second installment. In the third article, entitled "The Railroads Arrive," the authors discuss the advent of rails after an ambitious start and long delays occasioned by mismanagement and financial difficulties. This did not, Mr. Harnsberger and Mr. Wilkins maintain, solve the transportation problems of the valley — especially the Canadian section of it. In their final article, devoted to "Minnesota, Manitoba, and Monopoly," they examine the unhappy plight of Manitobans, who, they point out, were subjected to fiercely discriminatory freight rates by the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway as long as that company en­joyed a monopoly. The building of the Cana­dian Pacific "changed nothing," since it and other Canadian lines were operated in a de­liberate effort to shift the commerce of the province from Minneapolis and Chicago to dis­tant outlets in Ontario and Quebec.

The importance of Minnesota as the natural channel for the products of the entire Red River Valley, as well as the part played by the state's business interests in opening the valley to commerce and settlement, is empha­sized throughout the series. Unfortunately the articles suffer from numerous misspellings and other minor inaccuracies. R.G.

THE Louis W. and Maud Hill Family Founda­tion of St. Paul has made available a reprint of James J. Hill's Highways of Progress, originally published in 1910 (1962. vi, 354 p . ) . To it President Paul H. Giddens of Hamline Univer­sity and Monsignor James P. Shannon of St. Thomas College have contributed a brief "Fore­word" in which they point out that the "Empire Builder" wrote between 1900 and 1910 the "articles on a variety of current economic issues" that make up the book. Briefiy sketching the "background and the rapidly changing charac­ter of society in America" against which Hill made his comments, the writers conclude that "Hill's name deserves to live in the veneration of Americans more for his vision of the poten­tialities of the country than for his building of a rail line." The volume offers Hill's observations on such topics as agriculture and farm life, reciprocity with Canada, industrial and railroad consolidations. Oriental trade, irrigation and drainage, and the conservation of capital, land, and other natural resources.

THE YUGOSLAVS, one of our later immi­grant groups, have so far had little attention from historians, and almost no studies have been pubfished in the English language. Americans from Yugoslavia by Gerald G. Gov-orchin (1961. 352 p.) is an attempt to supply information on this topic by a review of the causes of immigration, early arrivals, popula­tion statistics, the Yugoslav press, and well-known Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in the United States. Among the latter the author includes Minnesota Congressman John Blatnik, to whose career he devotes several pages. Otherwise, however, he makes only casual mention of Min­nesota Yugoslavs, who form an important seg­ment of the population on the Mesabi Range.

E.J.

A CLASSIFIED hst of material appearing in the first twenty volumes of Norwegian-American Studies and Records, has been com­piled by Helen T. Katz, and is included in volume 20 of that publication (Northfield, Nor­wegian-American Historical Association, 1959. vfi, 246 p. $3.00.). The contents are divided into fourteen categories: bibliographical and

March 1963 241

research materials; biographical sketches; church and religion; community and regional studies; education and scholarship; the emi­grant journey; immigrant journals, letters, and memoirs; immigration and assimilation; litera­ture, art, and verse; newspapers; Norwegian-American Historical Association, program and policies; politics; Rocky Mountains, West Coast, Canada, and Alaska; and technological studies. In the absence of a comprehensive in­dex, this list provides a helpful guide to ma­terial buried in the voluminous files of the publication.

MADELEINE B. STERN can be counted on for books of unusual quality, and her latest con­tribution to the field of history is certainly no exception. We the Women: Career Firsts of Nineteenth-Century America (Schulte Pubfish­ing Company, New York, 1963. 403 p. $7.95.), contauis thoroughly documented, well-written biographical portiaits of fourteen rather unusual female pioneers in a number of different professions. Of special Minnesota in­terest is the account of Rebecca Pennell Dean, America's first woman college professor (at An­tioch College in Ohio, 1853-59). After her retirement from teaching in 1868, Mrs. Dean rounded out her years at the home of her nephew, Henry Blake, on a hfll overlooking Lake Owasso, near St. Paul. Several other Min­nesota items should also be noted: Ann S. Stephens, the author of the first Beadle Dime Novel, dedicated a book she wrote in 1872, The Reigning Belle, to "Mrs. Alexander Ram­sey . . . for her noble qualities as a lady." Isabel C. Barrows, the first American woman stenographic reporter for Congressional com­mittees, was the official reporter at the thir­teenth national conference on charities and corrections, held in St. Paul during July, 1886. In the chapter on Sarah G. Bagley, America's first woman telegrapher, there are several ref­erences to Caleb Cushing and his ill-fated in­terest in the water power at St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. J.T.D.

T H E M I N N E S O T A SCENE

WHAT MIGHT tiuly be called the opening chapter in the history of Minnesota as we know that area today is told by Edmund C. Bray in a recent publication of the Science Museum. The attractive volume, entitled A Million Years in Minnesota: The Glacial Story of the State (St. Paul, 1962. 49 p . ) , is avaib able in a hard cover for $2.95 or paper bound for $1.25, plus twenty-five cents postage and

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handling charges if ordered by mail. Mr. Bray tells the story of Minnesota glaciation briefly and in clear, nontechnical language, detailing the various stages of advancing and reticating glaciers that covered the state during the Pleistocene epoch and explaining the many present-day surface features that are the re­sult of glacial action. Much of the work's unique value is in its wealth of effective illus­trations. These include maps, charts, photo­graphs, and drawings, which not only enhance the reader's understanding but add much to the information presented in the text. A haff-page list of titles for "Suggested Additional Reading" and an index are also included.

^ R.G.

SEVERAL publications marking the centen­nial of the Sioux Uprising of 1862 have appeared during the past year. Among them is a special ten-section edition of the New Ulm Daily Jour­nal, pubfished on June 26, containing editorials, articles, and photographs describing important places and events of the outbreak.

A special issue of the Redwood Gazette (Redwood Falls) has been reprinted in booklet form under the title A Newspaper Story of the Sioux Uprising of 1862, by Wayne E. Webb (28 p . ) . Writing in journalistic style, Mr. Webb tells the story of the uprising as it might have been reported in a present-day newspaper. Events appear under such headlines as "Big Eagle Claims He Surrendered in Good Faith, Is War Prisoner." Photographs and maps are included.

Mr. Webb is also the author of a tourist guide to the Minnesota Vafley, entitled Larul of the Great Sioux Uprising (24 p . ) . The booklet contains photographs and descriptions of historic markers that have been placed throughout the area, and there is a double-page map, which identifies highways and lo­cates the markers.

The personal narrative of Mrs. Lavina East-lick, a settler who survived the Indian attack, has been reprinted in booklet form with photo­graphs and several brief documen'-s compiled by Ross A. Irish under the title Thrilling In­cidents of the Indian War of 1862 (1962. n.p.). First published in 1864, Mrs. Eastlick's account describes her flight from Lake Shetek in what is now Murray County to Mankato.

The Kandiyohi County Histocial Society has observed the centennial with a booklet entitled A Panorama of the Great Sioux Uprising {1962. 31 p . ) . It features twenty-two original paint­ings by local artists, depicting scenes of the uprising. These are reproduced in color and accompanied by an explanatory text.

MINNESOTA HistOTy

A series of ten reminiscent tales has been re­corded by F. J. Patten, whose grandfather, Jerry Patten, witnessed various scenes of the uprising and its aftermath while serving with Company H of the Sixth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. Published in booklet form under the title 1862: The Great Sioux Uprising (Mar­shall, 1962), they range from an account of Patten's enlistment at Fort Snelling in August, 1862, to the experiences of Company H on the so-called "Moscow Expedition" to the Missouri in 1863.

TEXT, photographs, and cartoons cover a wide range of subjects in a special six-section histori­cal edition of the Granite Falls Tribune, which appeared under the title "The Granite Falls Story" (June, 1962). Included in the review that spans a ninety-year period in the town's history are items on early landmarks, the de­velopment of schools, churches, clubs, sports, and industries, and some material on the Sioux Uprising as it affected settlers living in Yellow Medicine County in 1862.

THE OFFICE of the superuitendent of schools in Redwood County has issued a Historical Travel Guide for the county in honor of its hundredth anniversary (1962. 14 p . ) . The mimeographed booklet lists thirty sites of coun­ty and state-wide interest, all but six of which have markers. Highway directions and a brief description of each site are given for such places as the Joseph R. Brown house, the Rice Creek Sioux village. Sears, Roebuck and Company's first store. Boiling Springs, and others. The booklet includes two maps — one locating by number the various sites, the other an official highway map of the county.

THE Carlton County Historical Society has published a Brief History of the Pioneers of the Cromwell, Minnesota, Area by Bennett A. Beck, who himself settied there in 1893 (1962. 177 p.) . The little volume, which is bound in cloth, was reproduced from typewritten material. It contains information on the development of the village of Cromwell and the townships of Red Clover and Eagle, with numerous biographical sketches of early settlers — many of whom were Finnish —• as well as information on log­ging operations, commercial lffe in Cromwell — especially its co-operative creamery — political organization, and the growth of schools.

COMMUNITIES where nine of Minnesota's ethnic groups flourish are discussed by Gareth Hiebert in a series of articles which appeared

in the St. Paul Pioneer Press Pictorial Maga­zine during the winter and spring of 1962. New Prague (Czechs) is described on Febru­ary 11; Lindstrom, Scandia, and Center City (Swedes) on February 18; Rollingstone (Lux-emburgers) on March 4; West Albion (Finns) on March 11; Mountain Lake (Russian Men­nonites) on March 25; New Ulm (Germans) on April 1; Hanska (Norwegians) on April 8; Tyler (Danes) on May 6, and Ghent (Bel­gians) on June 17.

BRIEF information about some early settlers in the Twin Cities is contained in an article en­titled "Minneapolis: The Younger Twin," by Joseph B. Connors, in the July issue of Catholic Digest. Pioneers mentioned include Pierre Bot­tineau, Father Louis Hennepin, James J. Hill, Archbishop John Ireland, and two men who later contributed to the development of Minne­apolis, Charles M. Loring and Wilbur T. Fo-shay. The author also touches on the growth of the Twin Cities as a center for industiy, culture, and education in an area embracing North and South Dakota and parts of Montana, Iowa, Wis­consin, and western Canada.

A FORMER faculty member of the University of Minnesota Medical School is the subject of an article entitled "The Incredible Dr. Dight," by John Medelman, in the July number of Twin Citian. Mr. Medelman comments on the life of Dr. Charles F. Dight, who was the founder of the Minnesota Eugenics Society, forerunner of the University of Minnesota's Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics, and a vociferous crusader for the selective breeding of people. The author records some events in Dight's career as a Minneapolis alderman, elected in 1914 on the Socialist ticket; his views on war; and his lifelong interest in eugenics.

FIVE LETTERS tefling the History of the three steel rifled cannons which were presented to the First Minnesota Volunteers on 22 Feb­ruary 1862, make up a booklet published by the adjutant general's office in the Minnesota department of military affairs (1962. 6 p . ) . According to the first letter, dated Februaiy 22, 1862, and written by Major General Henry S. Sanford, who was then United States minister to Belgium, the cannons — complete with am­munition — were presented to the First Min­nesota Volunteers for their bravery in the Civil War batdes of Bull Run and Ball's Bluff. Suc­ceeding letters from Aaron Goodrich, secretiuy of the Brussels legation; Alexander Ramsey, governor of Minnesota; and P. H. Watson, as­sistant secretary of war, record the guns' trip

March 1963 243

from England to St. Paul. The cannons now stand in front of the headquarters building at Camp Ripley.

THE SIXTY-YEAR existence of the Minnesota State Automobile Association has been re­viewed in the March, 1962, issue of Minnesota Motorist. This souvenir edition contains more than twenty stories about the Minnesota asso­ciation, which was organized in October, 1902, only six months after the American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago. The arti­cles reveal that the association's early years were largely devoted to the struggle for better roads — a campaign which was carried on through lectures, lobbying, and "good roads tours." Other activities described include the maintenance of clubs for members, the pro­motion of school safety patrol programs, the erection of highway signs, and the provision of emergency road services. The edition is il­lustrated with many photographs, old and new.

A RIVER PACKET that burned and sank in the Mississippi just above La Crosse on the night of May 15, 1870, receives attention from Gretchen L. Lamberton in an article entitled "Winona Historians Hunt Relics of Fiery War Eagle Tragedy," which appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press for November 11. Mrs. Lamberton praises Dr. Lewis I. Younger, "the imaginative president" of the Winona County Historical Society, under whose duection the society has employed several scuba divers to probe the wreck of the Civil War side-wheeler for items from its sunken cargo of farm ma­chinery, china, and other supplies.

A CONFERENCE on underwater archaeol­ogy, sponsored by the Minnesota Historical So­ciety, will be held in St. Paul on Aprfl 26 and 27. Its program will include talks and panel discussions on the following topics: nature and limitations of underwater archaeology; its ap­plications; its legal aspects; underwater pho­tography and archaeology; historical research and identification; conservation of artifacts from salt and fresh water; and special project reports. Participants will include a number of nationally and internationally known experts in the field. Among them are: Stephan F. Bor-hegyi, director of the Milwaukee Public Mu­seum, who has done underwater archaeology in Guatemala; John M. Goggin, who has pio­neered this type of investigation in the Florida area; Charles T. Fritsch, chief field archaeolo­gist with an underwater expedition to Israel; George F. Bass, who has directed the excava­tion of several Bronze Age and Byzantine ship-

244

wrecks in the Mediterranean; Edwin C. Bearss, scientific adviser on work done with the sunken Civfl War gunboat "Cairo"; Samuel P. Town-send, who handled identification and conserva­tion of artifacts from the confederate blockade-runner "Modern Greece"; Robert B. Inverarity, who has directed recovery and conservation of colonial material from Lake George; and (ten­tatively) Anders Franzen, who located and raised the seventeenth-century Swedish war­ship "Vasa" in Stockholm harbor. The purpose of the conference is to promote a sharing of experience and skills in the relatively new field of underwater archaeology. The idea for it grew from the society's efforts to gather infor­mation and opinions which would be helpful in the underwater search for fur trade artifacts along the canoe routes of the border lakes.

TO EXPLORE the fascinatfi:ig and unpredict­able political behavior of the North Star State, which was so dramatically exemplified in the election of 1962, the Minnesota Historical So­ciety is presenting a two-year series of annual meeting lectures. The first of these will be given on May 9 by former governor Harold E. Stas­sen. His topic will be "The Conservative Politi­cal Tradition in Minnesota." The 1964 annual meeting will focus upon the state's liberal tra­dition and the speaker will be announced at a later date. These programs will review Minne­sota's long history of political nonconformity — a history which has seen the state diverge from the national pattern of a strong two party sys­tem and which has witnessed the emergence of a number of third parties along with an un­usually independent electorate. Interpreting this tradition will be persons who have been elected to high office by Minnesotans and who have helped to shape the state's volatile be­havior at the polls.

THE MONTH of February has marked the retirement of two Mfiinesota Historical Society staff members whose combined service with the institution totals sixty-seven years. Miss Lois M. Fawcett, head of the library's refer­ence department, retired February 1, and on February 28 the library also lost Miss Esther Jerabek, head of its technical services depart­ment. Both Miss Fawcett and Miss Jerabek look forward to pursuing their personal inter­ests in various fields of historical research. Mr. Michael Brook, who has worked for the past year in the reference department, has suc­ceeded Miss Fawcett, and Miss Jerabek's place has been taken by Mr. John A. Broe'sd, who first joined the staff in 1958 as an assistant cata­loguer.

MINNESOTA History

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